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NYPD and Seattle Police Beat Up Protesters
New York Police Beat Up Protesters AGAIN Today
NYPD beat up protesters again today:
Occupy Wall Street Arrests; Fox 5 Crew and Protesters Hit by Mace, Batons: MyFoxNY.com
As Alexander Higgins reports:
Seattle Police Rough Up ProtestersThis video shows Luke Rudkowski and other Occupy Wall street protestors being beat with Batons by White Shirts as the NYPD pepper sprays other members of the crowd. [Rudkowski is the lead reporter for We Are Change.]
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This photo shows the crowd being pepper spayed.
Also Seattle Police roughed up protesters today:
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Fair trade?
Americans spend an absolute fortune on their military. That money has to come from somewhere... and it does. It pushes up costs for everything in the US, including employment.
The US government ensures that the USD is required by other countries to buy oil. This means America can literally 'print' oil. But this creates enormous foreign demand for the USD, pushing up its value relative to other currencies. So unless Americans get paid less, they simply cannot compete with overseas workers.
It was government intervention in the jobs market, to 'protect' American low-skilled workers from 'exploitation' by imposing minimum wage laws, that has meant that instead of being 'exploited', they're now unemployed.
Americans want 'free' education. So what have they got? A useless, government-imposed education system. But your average Americans can't afford to send their kids to private schools because they've already paid for a state-education system with their (concomitantly) higher taxes. So private education has become the domain of the rich.
You've already stated the trend line for America is going in the wrong direction. And what is your solution? You want more government intervention... this time to protect 'American' jobs.
As for sticking things up my ass... I suggest you pick up an economics textbook, so you'll longer advocate policies you've just pulled straight out of yours.
Hmmm. OK...let me look at Econ 101, Chapter 1.
There is something in here about guns or butter. Wait! This book seems to imply that you can have either, but not both. Uh-oh....if the book is right, we really screwed up. (make mental note to come back and read this again).
Now here is something else about supply and demand. Holy batshit, Robin! If I'm reading this his stupid book right, it says that demand is the driver for supply. This can't be, can it? I mean how could it be possible. I thought everyone understood supply-side economics by now.
I guess you are right, Big Jim. This econ stuff is just too complicated for a simple guy like me. All I seem to understand is that if you have something of value, it might be a good idea to protect it from those who would like either take from you, or extract part of it's value for themsleves. I just can't seem to wrap my mind around the concept of playing a game where rules apply to one side, but not to the other. Where private business owners here have to compete with foreign governments & here all the regulations are written for the benefit for the chosen few....who then prey on the rest of us.
Not sure which textbook you're reading. You can have guns AND butter - you just use guns to demand butter from people who wouldn't otherwise give it to you (eg, USD reserve currency status, petrodollar, etc)
You seem to misunderstand what 'supply-side economics' means. Wiki gives a pretty good overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics
As for protecting something you have that is of value, that is different from protecting the process of making things of value from free-market competition. The 'rules' on both sides are skewed, but the main problem is that our governments' policies have loaded us with so many costs that we cannot compete with foreigners unless we reduce our wages. This is the point - people say we cannot compete with the Chinese because they are not burdened by minimum wage laws, EPA, and healthcare costs, but people forget these are (supposedly) benefits. Why do we expect to get all of the above, and a higher wage?
We should just pay American's $1 a day. Think of how many people we could employ. Or why pay them at all? We could just start owning the workers. What could possibly be bad about that?
/sarcasm
Stop blaming the victims.
Vote with your pizza! Bring food to the witnesses to the non-prosecutions. Where is the FED effigy draped in black cloth..call it Running Fed.
When the 'victims' have priced themselves out of the market, who else do you blame? Except... perhaps the politicians they voted into office who have priced them out of the market. Except not all workers voted for them. And not all politicians support uncompetitive minimum wage legislation.
Blame a system whereby the 'majority' gets to tell other people what wages they can (and cannot) work for. But a system is just that, it's a description of the interaction of people. The politicians who write the laws, the voters that elect them, the people in the 'justice' system that enforce the laws... lots of blame to go round.
When the 'victims' have priced themselves out of the market, who else do you blame? Except... perhaps the politicians they voted into office who have priced them out of the market.
You mean the politicians that tell you everything you want to hear to get elected then turn around and do the opposite. The politicians that cater to big business in order to line their own pockets, and end up working for them after they leave office. Then you elect another one and the cycle repeats. In this system it now takes millions of dollars to run for office so the candidates are chosen for you by big business from their donations. Regulatory capture and Mainstream media capture will continue to enable this system among other things. Its like a corrupt police dept., can you clean it up or will your career and life be ruined as a result of fighting it.
Blame a system whereby the 'majority' gets to tell other people what wages they can (and cannot) work for.
Majority of what? Dirty politicians in collusion with big business?
Our voters routinely and repeatedly vote for people that are clearly utter gobshites. They routinely and repeatedly vote for gobshites that advocate a 'strong' military.
One of the 'perks' Americans get is the knowledge that their MIC is the most well-funded in the entire world. So, next time you wander down to the soup kitchen, and hear an F16 split the sky, feel a warm glow, knowing that your sacrifice - giving up the chance of being affordable in a global market - has enabled the mighty USA to efficiently incinerate some shepherd in a far off country.
We live in a majoritarian democracy. Which means everyone gets to be bullied by whatever any significant minority demands. We have dirty politicians colluding with big business because government has so much power over every little facet of our economy that it makes it worthwhile (inevitable? mandatory?) for big business to bribe them.
The only way this is going to stop is if we go back to being a republic with a small government and sound money. I can't see that happening anytime soon. Meanwhile, blame whomever you like. It seems to me the entire system is fucked, and the majority of the people within it are colluding.
Of course, if you stop colluding (ie, stop paying tax) you'll wind up in a cage... with the majority of your fellow citizens applauding what they consider your rightful punishment. You could always stop colluding by leaving... but as most countries now have protectionist policies concerning freedom of movement (immigration rules) this is difficult too.
My point is: blaming companies for off-shoring 'American' jobs is very, very blinkered. If they didn't offshore the jobs, foreign competitors would put them out of business. And if we slap on tariffs, we'll wind up with a trade war (examine the aftermath of Smoot-Hawley to see whether this is a good idea). If we shrink the military down to a manageable size, we'll almost certainly lose reserve currency status, and we'll have hyper-inflation to match Weimar. And If we don't shrink the military, we'll go broke, and have to print....and we'll have hyper-inflation to match Weimar.
It's taken decades of bad policies to get where we are today. Blaming the likes of Apple for using cheaper labor overseas is stupid. They have no choice.
My point is: blaming companies for off-shoring 'American' jobs is very, very blinkered. If they didn't offshore the jobs, foreign competitors would put them out of business.
At face value this makes sense, but if you look at history its a different story. Big business and governments have been chasing cheaper labor and exploiting workers since the beginning of time, and using the government or lack of regulation to do it. Railroads were built by Chinese workers. Why because they were cheap and had no rights. Slaves were used for industry for the same reasons. Indonesia, Central and South America as well as many others have been victims of multinationals not because the big companies weren't competitive, but because of the monopoly and massive profits that were achievable. Who defended those rights when they were challenged? The U.S. government. General Smeddly Butler supported this argument. If its wrong to exploit our own workers then is it right to exploit another countries workers in the name of bigger profits?
The U.S. has allowed countries to export as much as they like while restricting what we can export to their country. I would say that country is protectionist, but you are against any kind of protectionist measures? Shouldn't this be balanced?
I think you're conflating different things. But you raise some interesting points.
There definitely are instances of peoples being thrown off their ancestral lands, and then having to work for the very companies that bribed (or were associated with) the forces that dispossessed them, because if they don't they'll starve. This is slavery in all but name. It's not a subject I've researched deeply but I agree, I don't see this issue considered much by libertarians and free-marketers. My feelings are that goods produced this way should be considered in the same light as stolen goods, and there should be an outright ban on their importation.
Then there are situations where countries are woefully underdeveloped, and entrepreneurs go in, set up companies, invest (and risk) millions, and hire the locals at what we consider 'slave' wages. Except the locals are more than happy to take the jobs, because the alternative is subsistence farming. I don't see this as being exploitative, or theft, and I see no moral justification for banning or slapping tariffs on them.
Then there are the in-between situations... places like China, where people are being hired at very low wages, but they're happy to take the jobs, but one of the reasons production is cheaper is because they - and by 'they', I mean the companies involved and the government - ignore environmental abuses. The libertarian stance (as I understand it) is that if the environmental toxins leach over to neighboring countries, then, by rights, those neighboring countries should be able to sue for compensation. But libertarians will argue that if the Chinese are willing to accept local environmental damages in order to produce goods, we should accept it and be glad, because we get the goods with none of the toxic by-products. But this argument ignores the fact that the local Chinese have absolutely no say in what happens to their environment because they live in a despotic regime. So should we slap tariffs on all Chinese goods? Or just the ones that produce local environmental damage?
And what about the crap WE'VE been dumping all over the world? The vast quantities of radioactive isotopes released over decades of nuclear bomb tests? Dumping tonnes of nuclear waste in seas and oceans? The tonnes of mercury released into the sea by Western and Japanese companies, that have rendered tuna and other Apex predators dangerous to eat in all but small quantities? Depleted uranium we've injected at 'our' enemies? Agent Orange squirted all over SE Asia? Does this entitle developing nations to slap tariffs on our goods?
I have no idea, but thanks for the discussion, you've helped me clarify things I need to consider more.
My main point was that most companies are shipping jobs overseas not because they are forced to (to remain competitive or because of unions), but because of the lure of masive profits and all the benefits that go with it. I might have gotten sidetracked a little. Thank you for the intelligent conversation.
The fact is that Globalisation has been very good to US Corporations but not so good for main street. So long as Congress is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the Corporatocracy, this is not going to change. There is a re-balancing going on in which living standards in the EM are increasing and those in the DM commensurately declining. Until they meet somewhere in the middle. The left should be happy with this?
While some companies are being compromised by unions most of the jobs that have been shipped overseas are not because of the unions. Its because of massive cheap labor and incentives from those countries like lower taxes, free property to build factories, no workmans comp, no health ins., no OSHA, no EPA, ect... basically expansion at the lowest cost available with limited gov. interference and cost. Its not the cost of $20 p.h. vs. $12 p.h., rather its $12 p.h. vs. $4 a day.
and i wish people would quit falling for the MSM bait calling protestors "marxists" or "communists"... are still living in the 1950's here? sure some of the hangers on like michael moore are liberal idiots... but most of the protestors don't fall into any "ism" catagory. the only "ism" that I think relevant is the fascism practiced by the current government/corporate/banking alliance.